RyanShell.com

Marketing, public relations, social media... and a little of this and that.

Some Articles You Might Enjoy

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The links below are to some articles I’ve read recently that you might also enjoy.

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Inline Speed Skating Crash Update – Well, I can Walk

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This post is part of my ongoing “Get Fit” series, an effort to lose a little weight/tone up, and save money by reducing the number of meals I eat out.

The photo to the left was taken last Tuesday (3-16-10) night after receiving a shot Dilaudid at Urgent Care, the result of an inline speed skating crash earlier in the evening. I don’t recall the photo being taken or anything else that happened after around 9 pm that night. If you missed it, here’s a quick video I shot last week Wednesday describing my crash and the resulting back pain.

Since then I’ve gone to the hospital (last Friday) to get further x-rays, which showed bruising of the bone and severely pulled muscles in my back. My ability to walk and stand up/sit down has improved, but unfortunately the back pain is still there. In addition, for some reason there’s a slight pain down my right thigh and groin area… I’ve got no clue what that’s all about.

I went to inline speed skating practice last night to roll around on my skates and see how things felt, but unfortunately I only skated around 10 laps before conceding to the fact that it hurt too much. You might be thinking, “Give it a rest,” but the thing is, I’m supposed to skate a competition Easter weekend.

At the event I’m scheduled to skate my division races, which I could easily bow out of, but I’m also supposed to skate five relay events. In regards to the relays, if I don’t skate it pretty much messes up the relay teams and other folks will have to sit out as well. At this point, only time will tell if I lace up my skates and compete next weekend.

I can only hope that a little more time will allow the pain to go away and things will go as planned next weekend, but if I can’t skate (yet) I can’t skate… and I’ve accepted that.

One thing is for sure, since this has happened I’ve thought about being paralyzed more times than I’d like to admit. I’ve never fallen while skating and not gotten up. More so, I’ve never fallen in such a way that my first thought was, “Make sure you can move your legs.” It was scary and something I hope to never experience again.

Social Media Potential: One part of the Equation

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about engagement, especially in the social media world.

Anyone can toss up a Facebook Page or start a Twitter account, but not everyone can make them work. Meaning, I think it takes a certain level of creativity and social ability to tap into an organizations social media potential (SMP) – something that could be defined as a combination of reach and engagement.

Just about anyone can take a news item or product special and post it on a site, but that doesn’t typically help build relationships or engage the audience. If your social media content isn’t generating conversations or some type of action on the consumers part, something is missing

In my opinion, hitting your social media potential takes something different; something that may even makes certain folks uncomfortable.

You might just have to take your business hat off everyone once in a while and talk to people like they are people. Go crazy. Have a conversation about something completely unrelated to your business.

As time passes, it will be interesting to see how the content/conversations evolve, and if more importance is put on the social ability of the person running the show. There’s much more too this, and I’ll probably do a follow-up post, but these are just some quick initial thoughts.

Search Engine Optimization 101

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Search engine optimization. You’ve heard others say it, you’ve read about its importance in articles… but do you have any clue as to where you should get started?

I don’t want to overwhelm you with massive detail; however I’d like to highlight some things that will help you from a search engine optimization standpoint. For this post I’ll keep my comments limited to the title, description and body of your Web pages (includes individual blog post).

Title

  • Should not exceed 72 characters
  • Title needs to include at least four words
  • Include the article/page copy keyword in the title and preferably at the beginning

Description

When you do a Google search the description is the short amount of copy that is under the sites name in the search results. Now for some things to keep in mind:

  • It should not exceed 165 characters
  • Be sure you use a keyword in the description and preferably use a primary keyword towards the beginning – this helps increase relevancy in the search

Body

  • Should ideally be at least 300 words – don’t feel obligated and end up rambling
  • Don’t overuse your keyword(s) as the post will kind of fall into a spam type category (again, high level detail here)
  • Give keywords emphasis by bolding the first instance or by using bullets
  • At least one hyperlink should be included per 120 words
  • Hyperlinks at the beginning of the body shows prominence

Follow those tips and you’ll enhance your sites search engine optimization. Re-read this article and take note of when/where the primary keyword (SEO) was utilized.

Chick-fil-A Understands Great Customer Service

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Great customer service shouldn’t be something that shocks you, but it probably does due to the fact that it happens so infrequently.

That being said, there is one organization that seems to have “great customer service” down pat… and that is Chick-fil-A. Now, eating there doesn’t exactly work with my get fit plan, but when I cheat it’s a place I like to frequent.

No matter if you dine in, or order at the drive-thru, you’re going to be greeted by someone saying “How may I serve you” (I think that’s what they say) and when you’re order is complete they’ll say “My pleasure.”

I’ve eaten at several different Chick-fil-A locations over the past few weeks, and every experience has been a good one. The staff is friendly, attentive and really seems to care that you have a good dining experience… they’re essentially doing their job, a job that so many organizations fail miserably at.

You can have the best marketing in the world, but a bad customer service experience can quickly wipe out the bells and whistles you’ve spent so much time and money developing.